Social Bookmarking

Social media is all the rage. You may not have your own profile on Facebook, or even visited the site that has allowed a woman in Georgia to meet a man with common interests in Texas, and then marry him. But, you would almost have to be a cave dweller to have not heard of Facebook and the phenomenon it has spawned. We’re not saying you need to become a Facebook fanatic, but this brainchild of a college student turned mega-millionaire entrepreneur has proven the power the Internet has in putting together people with common interests. What does it mean to you and your company? It means you need to enter the age of social media, or you may be missing out on a core group of potential customers who are learning about new products and making their buying decisions via information on the Internet.

Sales gurus have long touted the power of word-of-mouth endorsements for getting new customers. If there’s benefit derived from one customer telling 10 of their friends they like your product or service, think about what can be accomplished with one person on the Internet telling potentially millions that you’re great. That’s the power of social media.

Social media—in particular, social bookmarking—has become an integral component of successful public relations campaigns. Social bookmarking allows Internet users to share all of their favorite websites in categorized lists with other users who have similar interests. It is a creative way for you to bring a highly targeted audience to your site. By bookmarking your press releases and media use of those releases, you make them more easily accessible to web users. This web-based sharing is a great way for you to get your website noticed by search engines and bookmark-savvy users alike.

There are many social bookmarking sites from which to choose. Del.icio.us, Digg and Reddit are among the most popular. In order to use any of these free sites, just visit their sites and register. Registering takes about two minutes, and once you do, you can save just about any web address to any number of these sites for other users to view.

Registering basically entails choosing a username and password. Then, you’re ready to start bookmarking your sites by clicking the appropriate “save” links on the bookmarking homepages and following the instructions. You also can download toolbars for some of the bookmarking sites that can make tagging your web pages even easier. You will then either click the tag link on your toolbar or copy and paste your web address onto the bookmarking site to save a web page.

After you choose to tag a website, instructions will guide you to select specific keywords under which your site will be categorized. Choosing the right keywords for your site is, well…key in attracting the right audience to your content. Del.icio.us works fabulously for an organization interested in reaching a lot of people because it allows you to save your sites under as many keywords as you want.

Because some social bookmarking sites allow users to vote for their favorite web pages, success also depends on how favorably your websites are perceived. Digg and Reddit are two sites that allow users to vote on the content of those pages. As with any democratic election, websites that receive the most votes are ranked more highly and are moved to the first couple of pages of the bookmarking site, greatly increasing their readership. Getting your site bumped to the first page of one of these sites is quite an accomplishment because it can be difficult to do. Digg has become so popular, it can be challenging to post a site that will make it to the Digg homepage.  Having your web address displayed on the first page of any bookmarking site is a coup.

Another benefit of user-ranked content is that other users don’t have to sort through hundreds of useless articles to find what they are looking for. In some ways, social bookmarking can be an alternative to search engines because it locates hand-selected content and lists are maintained by users. Consider it “the voice of the people” on the Internet.

Visitors who find your site through social bookmarking may not stay there long, but impressions can be made even with short visits. Plus, you may be getting thousands of new visitors, as many websites saved through the more popular bookmarking channels do. Of those thousands, some may find your site interesting and vote for or bookmark it themselves. Talk about exposure! And once you do start bookmarking, it is beneficial to go back and track the number of users who vote for or save your site themselves in order to understand which bookmarking sites work best for you. Because of the follow-up that is necessary in order to reach your full bookmarking potential, social bookmarking can become somewhat time-consuming. However, as you will soon realize, it can also be very rewarding. 

While you may not know much about social bookmarking now, it’s time to look into what you might be missing. Chances are that like most people, once you do discover social bookmarking, you’ll be hooked. It might take a while to really catch onto what you’re doing, but it’s easy and beneficial once you do. All aboard: This is one marketing gravy train you don’t want to miss!

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